


Of Life Painted on a Blank Canvas

by maudlin (ishi_san1995)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blank Period, F/M, Flirting, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, yes Newton used to live in Kiri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29606289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishi_san1995/pseuds/maudlin
Summary: Snippets from a time no one really knows about.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29





	Of Life Painted on a Blank Canvas

“Are you sad? Are you sad because we left?”

Sasuke’s question is a simple one, born out of both curiosity and concern. He remembers the beam of Sakura’s smile when he asked if she wanted to leave with him, recalls the tightness of her embrace of affirmation.

Looking at Sakura beside him now- pensive, her lips pursed in thought- he wants nothing but another assurance that she regrets nothing, an assurance that he has not hurt her in any way when he indirectly asked her to give up the life she had built for herself. He had wanted her company even before he left for the first time but they both had work to do after the war. She needed to help the village rehabilitate and he had to help himself start to heal.

But that was two years ago and this is now.

“No, Sasuke-kun, I’m not sad. Why would you think that?” Sakura asks, worrying that Sasuke might have changed his mind about letting her come along.

They continue forward, walking towards the border, farther and farther from the village they are bound to, nearer and nearer to some uncertainty in their future; walking unhurriedly for there is no rush, no need to quickly get somewhere else, no need to figure out where to head to in the next immediate moment.

“You know,” Sasuke starts, stopping to look up at the top of trees overhead, “We are only a day away from the village, we can go back if that’s what you want.”

Sakura takes another step forward and turns, taking Sasuke’s hand and tugging him forward, making him look at her instead of the trees.

“I am exactly where I want to be right now, Sasuke-kun. I don’t want you to worry, please,” Sakura says with a smile.

He looks at her eyes and he is trusting of the honesty in the green of her irises. “I thought you were worried about leaving.”

She smiles even more, trusting in the calm of his voice. “I know the team I left, I am confident in their skills. They can hold down the fort in my absence. Now, come on, where would you like to go?”

Sakura gives his hand another tug: strong, an assurance, and they start walking again.

“I know of an orchard near here. The owner might need help around. Is that okay?”

She nods and squeezes his hand, and Sasuke thinks they look a lot like teenagers on a stroll, with no care in the world, no worries about the time, no qualms about the proximity, and nothing else on their minds but the moments they spend together.

“It’s just you and me for a while, huh, Sasuke-kun?” Sakura asks with another squeeze of their hands, and Sasuke tells himself that maybe- just maybe- Sakura might be feeling a little nervous about the uncertainty, too.

So he breathes in deep once, twice, and waits for his heart to calm. Then he says, “It’s better than both of us being by ourselves” with finality because it _is_ true, and it _is_ real, and Sakura looks up at him with another wide smile because she is giddy as if the schoolgirl in her never learned how to grow up.

He thinks back to when he used to choose to be alone, when she used to look dejected after his rejections, when he left, when she was left alone on a cold bench, when he was consumed by the shadows, when she used to risk more than she ever bargained for, when he fought in a war, when she fought to save his life, when he finally found some clarity, and when she became a piece of his peace.

All of those happened seemingly a lifetime ago, and this is now. They are 20, healing, still learning, and hand-in-hand beside each other.

—

“You’re quiet,” Sasuke utters, breaking the silence.

The silence between them has been going on for the better part of an hour; though he does not worry, he still chances a glance sideways, only to see her calm and concentrating on her work.

They are in the middle of an orchard picking ripe apples off of their trees. They passed by yesterday and the owner of the land needed help for his harvest since his previous helper is taking some time off to take care of his wife and their newborn child. They offered to help and the landowner offered food and a room to stay in for the next few nights in return.

Sakura picks from her tree, Sasuke picks from his, and she hums a recognition to his observation.

“Are you telling me you miss hearing me talk?” she asks with a small smile, the thought of him liking how her voice sounds like curling the corners of her lips upwards.

He scoffs at the question instead and counters with, “I am saying you are being quiet,” and follows it with, “Is there anything on your mind?”

She takes an apple and shows it to him atop her palm. “I think it’s amazing how everything we know about what grounds us is because of a falling apple.”

Sasuke raises his eyebrows at that, so Sakura goes on talking as she goes back to picking, and Sasuke stares.

“There have been many studies about it, actually, in one of the civilian villages up in the Land of Lightning. They studied why and how things fall, why and how some stay on the ground, some become destroyed upon impact, and some bounce back up. It was an interesting read.”

“When did you have time to read a book like that?”

He had to ask because Sakura always takes too much on her plate at any given time and the idea of her squeezing into her days reading a book that does not help her work in any way sounds absurd if he is being honest.

But Sakura laughs. It is gentle- a trace of the little girl with impractical notions of love. She puts into her basket the last ripe apple from her tree and turns to face Sasuke, and her smile is a beam- a trace of the little girl, seemingly a lifetime ago, whose long (and short) hair he has watched dance with the wind.

“That was a long time ago and it wasn’t a book,” she says with another laugh. “I was 14. Tsunade-shishou got drunk one harsh afternoon because there was an ANBU mission that failed and two of them died. So Shizune-san went to work at the hospital and asked me to stay and watch over the Godaime in case she wakes up and asks for anything. Tsunade-shishou has told me before that I am welcome to read any of her scrolls from the non-restricted shelves, so I read that one particular scientific report. It was not very long. It took me around an hour to finish the whole thing.”

Sasuke asks as he eyes his half-empty basket (or half-full, if you ask Sakura), interested enough to keep the conversation going, to keep Sakura talking, “So what did they have to say about it? Why do things fall?”

She hums first, hoping to remember all the equations she had read years ago and trying to come up with a way to explain it without sounding boring like a drawling teacher, and then she says, “Honestly, I’m not sure if I remember everything correctly, but… Well, forces act on each other all the time. Any imbalance on these forces would cause an action and a consequent reaction.”

Sasuke nods, although he is not quite sure yet how that would make anything fall.

But Sakura continues. “So, if there is something that would cause an object to fall, what makes it fall is a universal force, and that force is quantified depending on the object’s mass and how fast or slow it is going.”

“The faster it goes and the heavier it is, the stronger the force,” Sasuke says in conclusion.

“Yes,” Sakura nods. “Well, I guess you weren’t number one in class for nothing,” she says as an afterthought, but Sasuke rolls his eyes at her.

He goes back to filling his basket and Sakura takes a seat under the tree where she could watch Sasuke work, and they stay quiet for a while, until Sasuke mutters, “I wonder.”

“About what, Sasuke-kun?” Sakura asks with a raised eyebrow.

He meets her eyes and says, “I wonder if that also applies to people.”

Sakura blinks once, twice, and takes a deep breath before asking, “Do you mean people falling from high places or…”

Sasuke puts down one last apple to fill his basket. “No,” he says, before turning around to sit beside Sakura, and then follows it with, “I mean people falling for other people.”

At that, Sakura smiles slyly, dipping her chin down to one shoulder to try to make herself as cute as possible before asking Sasuke, with several bats of her eyelashes, “Oh, like how you have fallen for me?”

Sasuke’s hum is a long one, contemplative, as if the corners of his lips aren’t fighting so hard to curve up with mischief. He looks at Sakura in his periphery and then turns to face her fully, with her long eyelashes fanned out, her pretty smile, and her cute attempt to flirt with him.

He wonders how someone so small could be wholesome and frightening and in love with him all at the same time.

“Or,” he counters her answer, eager for her and the different aspects of herself that she bares for him, “Like how you have fallen for me,” he says, starting to move his face closer to hers with the intent of seeing her blush.

“Hard,” Sasuke whispers with a breath, and Sakura closes her eyes and fights the blush that is already on her cheeks as she suppresses the urge to scream at her impending first kiss.

“Because you are strong,” Sasuke continues, lips curved upward at the redness of Sakura’s face, heart racing because of the intimacy they now share.

“And also,” he whispers, their lips now brushing against each other’s, and Sasuke very much wants to kiss Sakura. He wants to take this chance and turn it into something entirely new for both of them. He knows that their first kiss will be the first for both of them (and anybody who will argue that Naruto is his first kiss will get a fist to their jaw), but he wants to make sure that Sakura gets the best first kiss that he knows she deserves. So, he decides, not yet.

“Because you are heavy,” he finishes with a smirk.

Sakura takes another second before she opens her eyes; Sasuke has always been faster than she is, and he is already 10 paces away when her eyes have adjusted to the light.

“What?!” she shrieks, but then she stops for several moments.

She watches Sasuke from three trees away and listens to his quiet laughter that she has not yet heard enough of; when she sees his eyes crinkled in his own little delight, she feels her tiny heart triple in size.

When she recovers, she gets up from the spot where she almost got rooted in and brushes the dust from her clothes. “You should not have ruined that moment for me, you know,” she recites as seriously as she can.

But Sasuke could see her stance clearly, could see the start of a sprint in the way she minutely moves her legs and plants her feet. She starts running and so does he.

They run around the orchard, one chasing the other, their legs moving one step forward at a time. What goes up must come down, what goes around comes back around.

It is a universal force, that which makes things fall, and it depends on how weighted a thing is multiplied by the rate at which it is going.

Sakura chases Sasuke around the orchard, not quite able to reach him, until he decides to slow down and catch her in his arm, caging her in and holding her close while they catch their breaths, and then kissing the top of her head. They hold hands while walking back to their baskets, hold their baskets back to the large table by the edge of the farm, and hold each other close, even if they are not quite touching.

It is an unquantifiable force, that which makes people fall for other people, and independent of how one must feel or the rate at which they are going. Though it is universal, and always multiplied by how one person makes the other feel, regardless of how fast or slow they are going.

—

Later that night, Sasuke and Sakura lie next to each other in bed, holding each other close, breathing each other in, their first kiss kept at bay.

Sasuke traces the curves of Sakura’s spine using his large overpowered hand and Sakura feels the rhythm of Sasuke’s jugular pulse in her tiny powerful fingertips.

“I don’t even understand why my body hurts. The work we’ve done is significantly less than what I used to do at the hospital,” Sakura whispers, if only to hear Sasuke’s baritone in the quiet of the night.

“Maybe it hurts because your body is looking for the old kind of tired that it is used to,” Sasuke answers, unsure.

“Well,” she says, thinking of what to answer him until she settles with, “It would have been my heart hurting otherwise, Sasuke-kun.” She pulls back a little to look up at him, look at his eyes that are black, so dark, and so comforting. “I had to pick just one struggle and I gladly choose this one,” she says with a genuine smile.

And she feels his breath hitch, only for just a fraction of a moment, so she decides to tuck her head back into the nook of his neck, her one hand palming the steady thrum of his heart, and she says her good night. “You make me feel like I’m floating.”

He also says his, with a firm palm on the small of her back. “You ground me.”


End file.
